3.11 The Good Samaritan
XI. THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
Apparently while Jesus was still in Galilee, a certain Scribe put Him the question, Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He answered: “What is written in the Law? how readest thou?” The Scribe replied: “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself.” Jesus, satisfied with his answer, said to him: “Thou hast answered rightly: this do, and thou shalt live.” His questioner, however, was not content with knowledge which he already possessed, and in addition he wished to justify himself.
He therefore addressed to Jesus the further THE PARABLES OF JESUS 151 question: “And who is my neighbour?” Our Lord, instead of answering directly, related the following parable illustrative of the question: A certain man on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho fell among robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and departed leaving him half dead. First a priest who chanced to be making the same journey, and then a Levite, saw him, but, instead of helping him in his need, they unfeelingly passed by on the other side. A certain Samaritan, however, who was travelling that way, showed himself more humane. He had no sooner descried the poor sufferer lying there by the wayside than he was moved to compassion by his wretched plight. He drew near to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on them wine and oil. He then set him on his own beast, and walked beside him till he brought him to an inn or caravansary, where he tended him with charitable care. On the morrow, as he was about to resume his journey, he took out two denars and gave them to the keeper of the inn, with an injunction to attend to the wounded man, at the same time promising that he would pay him for any further outlay 152 THE PARABLES OF JESUS which he might find it necessary to make. This was the parable, and now Jesus asks His questioner: “Which of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?” He replied: “ He that showed mercy to him.” He had given the correct answer, and Jesus had now simply to bid him act in accordance with it when occasion should serve. “ Go,” He said, “ and do thou in like manner.”
Possibly the circumstance that the Scribe stood up may denote that the incident took place in a synagogue. We need not assume that the question was prompted by an evil motive: the Scribe may have been genuinely anxious to know by what means he could ensure to himself a share in eternal life. The formula “ How readest thou?” was in common use in the Jewish schools of that period; and the words of Jesus implied that the knowledge which His questioner sought was already in his own possession. The Scribe’s answer, embodying the two great commandments of the Law, was composed of two Old Testament passages, one in a slightly amplified form from Deuteronomy (vi. 5), in which the love of God THE PARABLES OF JESUS 153 was enjoined upon Israel; the other from Leviticus (xix. 18), inculcating the love of the neighbour. The former passage was one with which every Jew was familiar, as it formed part of the Sh ma, or Confession of Faith. The further question of the Scribe which gave occasion for the parable was a reasonable one. The commandment in Leviticus was plain and free from ambiguity; but the term “ neighbour “ was not employed there in so extended a sense as when used by Jesus; the Scribe, casuist as he was, may well have had some suspicion that the obligation had a wider application than the narrow particu larism of Jewry gave it; and his doubt on the point would serve as a justification for putting a question the answer to which seemed already known to him. Or, to base a supposition on 16:15, he may have wished to justify himself like the ruler (xviii. 21) by alleging his fulfilment of the Law as interpreted by Jesus.
Jericho was situated about seventeen miles to the north-east of Jerusalem, and the road thither for the most part lay through a desert which in Our Lord’s time was infested by robbers. The wayfarer in the parable seems 154 THE PARABLES OF JESUS to have been travelling alone, and thus he fell an easy prey into their hands. We may assume with certainty that Jesus wished to represent him as a Jew; and yet the priest, who, one would expect, should have exemplified in his own person the higher teaching of the Law, at least towards one bound to him by the double tie of race and religion, felt no compassion for him, and passed on. A Levite, a member of an order which, though shorn of some of its former privileges, still took an important part in the Temple services, was guilty of the like heartless conduct. Help came from an unexpected quarter, from a Samaritan who was passing that way. The Samaritans, who took their name from Samaria, where they dwelt, were descended from a mixed people composed of the remnant of the Israelites left behind in their land when the greater part of the inhabitants were deported to Assyria, and of the heathen colonists who took the place of the latter, the heathen element being largely preponderant. At first this people worshipped their national gods; but, in consequence of a plague of lions which Jahweh sent among them in punish- THE PARABLES OF JESUS 155 ment of their neglect of His worship on His own land, one of the deported priests familiar with the Israelite ritual was by command of the King of Assyria himself fetched back from exile, and by this means the cultus of Jahweh was restored at the traditional sanctuary of Bethel. Of course this does not imply that rulers and people regarded Jahweh as the sole sovereign Governor of the Universe; at most they paid Him special veneration as the god of the land which they had occupied (4 Kings xvii.)- Later, though the worship of the heathen gods was discontinued and Jahweh reigned alone, the hostility which the Samaritans showed to the Jews in the trying times which succeeded the return of the latter from exile, and at a subsequent date the erection on Mount Gerizim of a rival temple to that of Jerusalem, provoked an intensely bitter feeling on the part of the Jews towards their northern neighbours, a feeling which the Samaritans heartily reciprocated. Ben Sira (3rd cent. B.C.) coupled in his abhorrence “ the foolish people who dwell at Sichem “ with the Edomites and Philistines; 1 and we find the 1 Ecclus. 1:27 /.
156 THE PARABLES OF JESUS Jews accusing Our Lord in one breath of being a Samaritan and having a devil (John 8:48).
It was only natural, then, that both peoples avoided not only all religious but also all civil and social intercourse with each other (John 4:9). We may suppose the Samaritan in our parable to have shared the feelings of enmity with which his countrymen regarded the Jews. The claims of humanity, however, prevailed over sentiments of national and religious bigotry. Alien as he was alike in race and in religion, his heart was touched at the sight of such distress, and he resolved to alleviate it. Though a stranger to the teachings of the Gospel, he did all that the most delicate Christian charity could have suggested, and both in the judgment of Jesus and in that of the Scribe his conduct entitled him to be regarded as the neighbour of him who fell among the robbers. The Scribe might have answered the question of Jesus at the end of the parable by simply saying “ The Samaritan”; the circumlocution which he employed may have been caused by anunwillingness to pronounce the hated name, and thus state in a manner unnecessarily harsh THE PARABLES OF JESUS 157 and direct a conclusion at variance with the principles and practice of Judaism, to which nevertheless the logic of the parable compelled him. As regarded the substance of his reply, he had once more answered rightly: he had partly solved his own question; and Jesus in the words with which the narrative closes made the action of the Samaritan a standard of conduct for all time. The four verses 25-28 bear a strong resem blance to the section Matthew 22:34 - Matthew 22:40; Mark 12:28 - Mark 12:34, which has for subject the question concerning the great commandment, and to which St. Luke has no parallel, unless with the critics we regard these verses as such. Besides the general resemblance which they bear to the section just mentioned, other points which taken as a whole the episode in St. Luke suggests tend to favour their identification. In the parallel section it is Jesus, not the questioner, who couples the two great commandments; and it is alleged that St. Luke made the change for the purpose of facilitating the introduction of the parable. It is further objected that the parable does not really answer the question of the Scribe who 158 THE PARABLES OF JESUS demanded who his neighbour was, taking the term in the sense of the object to whom love should be shown, whereas in the answer the term appears as the subject who should exercise it. These objections are by no means insurmountable, and need not oblige us to regard the setting of the parable as unhistorical and as due to the editorial work of the Evange list desirous of inserting it in a suitable frame work. We freely grant that an answer in which the two great commandments are coupled would be more natural in the mouth of Jesus than in that of a Jewish doctor; but, then, we are confronted with a passage in Philo, the Jewish contemporary of Jesus, in which the whole duty of man is summed up as a twofold duty, inasmuch as it has a two fold object his relations towards God and his relations towards men. We do not attach any importance to the fact that another Scribe (Mark 12:33) likewise joins both commandments, for the reason that he only echoes approvingly the words of Jesus. As regards the second objection, it must be borne in mind that the Scribe did not ask for a definition of the term “ neighbour “: he wished THE PARABLES OF JESUS 159 merely to know for practical purposes who his neighbour was; and it would be quite characteristic of Jesus, Who inculcated charity, even charity towards enemies, so strongly, that in His reply the term should be used in an active rather than in a passive sense.
TAGS: [Parables]